David Copperfield, Charles Dickens [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

all a deal of ’umbleness⁠—not much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be ’umble to this person, and ’umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the monitor-medal by being ’umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by being ’umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-behaved man, that they were determined to bring him in. ‘Be ’umble, Uriah,’ says father to me, ‘and you’ll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at school; it’s what goes down best. Be ’umble,’ says father, ‘and you’ll do!’ And really it ain’t done bad!”

It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.

“When I was quite a young boy,” said Uriah, “I got to know what ’umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate ’umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the ’umble point of my learning, and says I, ‘Hold hard!’ When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. ‘People like to be above you,’ says father, ‘keep yourself down.’ I am very ’umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I’ve got a little power!”

And he said all this⁠—I knew, as I saw his face in the moonlight⁠—that I might understand he was resolved to recompense himself by using his power. I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.

His account of himself was so far attended with an agreeable result, that it led to his withdrawing his hand in order that he might have another hug of himself under the chin. Once apart from him, I was determined to keep apart; and we walked back, side by side, saying very little more by the way. Whether his spirits were elevated by the communication I had made to him, or by his having indulged in this retrospect, I don’t know; but they were raised by some influence. He talked more at dinner than was usual with him; asked his mother (off duty, from the moment of our reentering the house) whether he was not growing too old for a bachelor; and once looked at Agnes so, that I would have given all I had, for leave to knock him down.

When we three males were left alone after dinner, he got into a more adventurous state. He had taken little or no wine; and I presume it was the mere insolence of triumph that was upon him, flushed perhaps by the temptation my presence furnished to its exhibition.

I had observed yesterday, that he tried to entice Mr. Wickfield to drink; and, interpreting the look which Agnes had given me as she went out, had limited myself to one glass, and then proposed that we should follow her. I would have done so again today; but Uriah was too quick for me.

“We seldom see our present visitor, sir,” he said, addressing Mr. Wickfield, sitting, such a contrast to him, at the end of the table, “and I should propose to give him welcome in another glass or two of wine, if you have no objections. Mr. Copperfield, your elth and appiness!”

I was obliged to make a show of taking the hand he stretched across to me; and then, with very different emotions, I took the hand of the broken gentleman, his partner.

“Come, fellow-partner,” said Uriah, “if I may take the liberty⁠—now, suppose you give us something or another appropriate to Copperfield!”

I pass over Mr. Wickfield’s proposing my aunt, his proposing Mr. Dick, his proposing Doctors’ Commons, his proposing Uriah, his drinking everything twice; his consciousness of his own weakness, the ineffectual effort that he made against it; the struggle between his shame in Uriah’s deportment, and his desire to conciliate him; the manifest exultation with which Uriah twisted and turned, and held him up before me. It made me sick at heart to see, and my hand recoils from writing it.

“Come, fellow-partner!” said Uriah, at last, “I’ll give you another one, and I ’umbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the divinest of her sex.”

Her father had his empty glass in his hand. I saw him set it down, look at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrink back in his elbow-chair.

“I’m an ’umble individual to give you her ’elth,” proceeded Uriah, “but I admire⁠—adore her.”

No physical pain that her father’s grey head could have borne, I think, could have been more terrible to me, than the mental endurance I saw compressed now within both his hands.

“Agnes,” said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing what the nature of his action was, “Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to say, the divinest of her sex. May I speak out, among friends? To be her father is a proud distinction, but to be her ’usband⁠—”

Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with which her father rose up from the table! “What’s the matter?” said Uriah, turning of a deadly colour. “You are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I hope? If I say I’ve an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as good a right to it as another man. I have a better right to it than any other man!”

I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by everything that I could think of, oftenest of all by his love for Agnes, to calm himself a little. He was mad for the moment; tearing out his hair, beating his head, trying